Today they help to reveal more about ancient harvesting practices and show how knowledge of the ecology of H. This resulted in large, relatively well-preserved middens.

Pliny the Elder wrote in the collection of works known as Natural History that small amounts of these snails could be harvested by hand from rocky coastlines or by diving however, larger quantities were collected using a nassae, a type of baited trap. Each snail only produced a very small amount of dye, so to meet demands, the Banded dye-murex snails were collected en masse. trunculus for its dye may have originated in Crete, but the industry grew during the Phoenician trading empire and reached its apex during the Roman and Byzantine empires. Tyrian purple mostly came from the murex snail, Hexaplex trunculus, commonly known as the Banded dye-Murex. The remnants of a thousand year old purple dye economy can be used along with modern studies to reveal the feeding ecology of this snail (Cooksey 2001). The rich color and these unique traits made Tyrian purple and the snail it comes from highly coveted. It is a beautiful, extremely lightfast reddish-purple pigment, which becomes darker and more saturated rather than fading over time. Tyrian purple is a dye known by many names: shellfish purple, purple of the ancients, royal purple and 6,6’-Dibromoindigo.

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